AFI Fest 2012

Young Hollywood: Bruce Willis stuns Mary E. Winstead into silence

Actors often do their best not to seem intimidated by other actors. But sometimes you just can't help being starstruck.

Just ask Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who was so nervous around her "A Good Day to Die Hard" costar Bruce Willis that she barely interacted with him on the set of the upcoming action flick.

“He’s just such a big movie star. During that entire movie shoot I was, like, silent,” said Winstead, who joined Aubrey Plaza and Bella Heathcote on the Los Angeles Times' third-annual Young Hollywood roundtable Friday. “I was completely, completely nervous. I just couldn’t see him as a normal guy.”

Fortunately for Plaza, her comedy hero, Adam Sandler, proved to be a more calming presence on the set of 2009’s “Funny People.”

“I definitely tried to play it cool around him, so I just kept casually eating apples,” she deadpanned. “He was just standing next to me and I was looking at all the craziness and he was like, ‘Don’t worry, I got you. It’s all gonna be good.’ I was like, ‘All right. Now he secretly has got me. Someone’s got me!' "

To hear how Heathcote reacted to costar Johnny Depp on the set of "Dark Shadows," check out the clip above. And circle back with Movies Now through the week as we post more videos from the AFI Fest conversation.